Clouds pass over Tiger Stadium on Monday, March 20, 2023, on LSU’s campus in Baton Rouge, La.

U.S. President Donald Trump has issued a posthumous pardon to former LSU football star Billy Cannon, who served time in federal prison in the 1980s for counterfeiting. 

Cannon’s pardon was announced with those of former other NFL football players Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis and Travis Henry, who are all still alive. Alice Marie Johnson, the first-ever White House pardon czar, shared the news Friday on social media. 

“As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again,” Johnson wrote. “So is our nation.” 

Cannon served two and a half years out of a five-year sentence for printing $6 million in fake $100 bills.

Cannon is one of the most famous football players in LSU history and immortalized with a bronze statue outside of Tiger Stadium, the school’s only football player to receive that honor.   

Footage of Cannon’s legendary “Halloween Run,” in which he ran 89 yards late in the fourth quarter for the game-winning touchdown against rival Ole Miss in 1959, is played before each LSU home football game. In that same game, Cannon and teammate Warren Rabb made a game-saving tackle at the 1-yard line on fourth down with 18 seconds left to crush the undefeated Rebels’ comeback hopes.

He was awarded the Heisman Trophy that season, the first for an LSU player.

Bunnie Cannon, Billy’s daughter, praised the pardon in a Facebook post. 

“During his lifetime no matter how much good my father did he could not outrun his failures,” she wrote. “One mistake does not and should not define you! Thank you Alice Johnson, our elected officials in Washington and President Trump for this gift to our family.” 

Cannon practiced dentistry and orthodontia after retiring from professional football. Failed real estate investments and gambling debts led to him into counterfeiting, resulting in a federal conviction in 1983.

After Cannon was released from prison, he became the dentist at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, rebuilding its dental care facility and eventually being put in charge of the entire medical system at the prison. 

Cannon died May 20, 2018, the same day then-LSU football coach Ed Orgeron recruited Joe Burrow to play for the Tigers. The following year, Burrow became the first LSU football player  since Cannon to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy, helping bolster Cannon’s legendary status among LSU fans.

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